Even though we are pretty tech-savvy when it comes to education, linguistics, computers–I mean, you are reading this in an email sent out on the Internet–we must admit that we feel somewhat bewildered with “smart phones”.
We got our first cell phone when Norma Jean was going to University in BC, and went with what we thought was a reasonable service provider and have been slowly getting used to using a phone that is not physically wired to the wall ever since.
When we moved to Ontario, we decided against having a “landline” (a wired-in home phone), and just use our cell phone for all voice calls. When we set up housekeeping at our home in Windham Centre, Ontario, we requested our cell phone provider to change our number to a “local” number.
But we discovered that through some administrative slip-up, they provided us with a number for “Wingham, Ontario”, which is actually a “toll call” for most of our new friends who live near us in southern Ontario.
Finally, after spending some frustrating hours with a customer service representative who could not understand why we should even care that our local friends and acquaintances would have to pay long-distance charges just to talk with us calling from the next village over (“after all,” they told us, “you’re not paying any extra charges, the ones who make the call have to pay that.”)we decided to change service providers, and get a new local number.
So yesterday we went to one of those “cell-phone kiosks” that you see all over the place in every shopping mall, and brought our current HTC Android smart phone and a copy of our old phone bill. Of course we had to learn about “unlocking” our phone, and then get it done, and then negotiate a new “phone plan” with our new provider. It still took an hour and a half to get through the whole process.
It looks like our new monthly bill will be less than half of what we were paying for the past three years, with the promise of hundreds of “more minutes” to use each month.
We selected a very basic plan, with “no data” (only voice, and unlimited international “texting”). We are somewhat old fashioned in that we like to use our computers to go on the Internet, not our phone.
So now it’s your turn: Right now, go update your “Contacts” or your “Address Book” or your “Rolodex” or your “Little Black Book”, and DELETE or cross out our OLD number: (519-357-5163) and put in our NEW number 226-567-4440 instead.
Our mailing address and email addresses are still the same. The only thing that’s new is our phone number: